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Showing: 31 May - 6 June 1999

H-L Helper Version 2.0 Released [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:46 CET - cosmo]
Karl Ward mailed in the news of a new H-L Helper release. This is version 2 of the little handy program that allows you to create an unlimited number of presets that load Half-Life how you want it to. Get more info at The H-L Helper Homepage, or download it from this Direct Link

Gamedesign.net Prefabs Updated [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:46 CET - cosmo]
The Gamedesign.net Prefabs site has been updated and now includes a total of 325 prefabs for 6 different games - Quake, Quake II, Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Sin, and Unreal.

Blue Interview [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:46 CET - cosmo]
There's an interview with the smurf-colored guy over at Avault. Be sure to read the it - at's a cool read 8) Seen on? Blue's News!

New NVIDIA Reference Drivers [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:46 CET - cosmo]
Saw on Blue's that NVIDIA has released new Win9x reference drivers for boards based on their TNT/TNT2 chips. There are separate PCI and AGP versions - and the NT release will be out soon. Also, Creative Labs has released new Unified drivers, version 1.11, for the Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT based cards. You can get them at http://www.soundblaster.com/hotgraphics/unified/ (Thanks PlanetRIVA)

Unreal Contest Winners Announced [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:35 CET - cosmo]
Stallion over at Planet Unreal let me know that The Early Bird Category winners in the $150,000 Make Something Unreal Contest have been announced. Congrats to the first five winnes, which will recieve $2000 each:

DM Incizor

Unreal4Ever

Infiltration

CMS: Shadows of Na Pali

Unloaded

TweakAll 1.1 [Sunday 6 June 1999 - 13:29 CET - cosmo]
The Abton's Shed Team has released version 1.1 of their excellent Windows-tweaker program, TweakAll. I've been beta testing the latest builds for some weeks, and I must say that this program rocks!

New UT Preview [Friday 4 June 1999 - 20:20 CET - cosmo]
Mia'cova over at Planet Unreal has posted yet another UT preview, but this is really respectfully entitled: The Official Planet Unreal Unreal Tournament preview. It's a damn cool read - so better check it out!

225 Patch not just for servers? [Friday 4 June 1999 - 20:12 CET - cosmo]
Saw on Blue's that RIVA3D added some words about the recently released 225f Patch for server admins - and that it will, among other things, improve your D3D performance. I am waiting for a confirmation from Epic's Tim Sweeney - he haven't replied yet. Byt anyway, here's a direct link to the patch - and the the poop from RIVA3D:

Guess what? Curiously, Epic did not speak to the fact that the Unreal 2.25 patch improves D3D performance by an average of 20%. Not only that, but you have many more D3D settings under advanced-rendering-D3D menu, including options for Triple buffering, multitexturing, etc. I've posted a little blurb in the news, with fps improvements over 2.24 shown at 8x6 res, with a link to the patch.

id Worklog [Friday 4 June 1999 - 20:06 CET - cosmo]
Some employees over at id Software's offices has updated their .plans with the latest worlog from Quake3Arena. The main folks are John "Mr. C" Carmack and Dave "Zoid" Kirsch. In addition to those, Graeme "GreenMarine" Devine over at Epic Megagames added a rather funny worklog to his .plan.

New PingTool [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:58 CET - cosmo]
Version 2.5 beta 8 of the PingTool server browser is now available. This new beta fixes the bugs reported in beta 7, and will after all intends and purposes, be the latest beta before Version 2.5 Final.

On Q3A Strafe-jumping [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:54 CET - cosmo]
As a decent strafe-jumper, I became quite mad when I read John Carmack's .plan update with the word on his new feature in Quake3Arena killing the ability to jump right after a landing. Here's a new .plan update on the subject:

Whee! Lots of hate mail from strafe-jupers!

Some reasonable messages have convinced me that a single immediate jump after landing may be important to gameplay. I'll experiment with it.

Strafe jumping is an exploitable bug. Just because people have practiced hard to allow themselves to take advantage of it does not justify it's existance. When I tried fixing the code so that it just didn't work, I thought it changed the normal running movement in an unfortunate way.

In the absense of powerups or level features (wind tunnels, jump pads, etc), the game characters are supposed to be badasses with big guns. Arnold Schwartzenegger and Sigourney Weaver don't get down a hallway by hopping like a bunny rabbit.

This is personal preference, but when I play online, I enjoy it more when people are running around dodging, rather than hopping.

My personal preference just counts a lot. :-)

btw, here are the current weapon effects:

gauntlet: 50 pts, 400 msec / punch
machinegun: 10 pts, 100 msec / shot
shotgun: 11 pellets of 10 each, 1000 msec / shot
rocket launcher: 100 pts direct hit, or 100 pts splash damage falling off
over 120 world units, 800 msec / shot
plasma gun: 20 pts direct hit or 15 pts splash damage over 15 units,
100 msec / shot
railgun: 100 pts, 1500 msec / shot
lightning gun: 8 pts, 33 msec / trace, max range 768 units
grenade launcher: 100 pts direct hit, or 100 pts splash over 150 units,
800 msec / shot.
bfg: 40 pts instant splash damage over 100 units, 100 msec / shot
flamethrower: to be determined, but short range / wide angle

Splash damage is calculated from the edge of the player's box, unlike
quake1, where it was calculated froom the player's origin.

New Rage Drivers [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:48 CET - cosmo]
ATI Technologies has new Win95b-98 and NT display drivers for boards based on their Rage 128 chip, as well as some new Win95b-98 drivers for the Rage Pro chip. All the new released are optimized for the Quake3Arena Test. The files are available on ATI's Special Drivers page

New Diamond Drivers [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:44 CET - cosmo]
New 4.01 drivers for Diamond's TNT2-based boards. There's multilanguage files over there - both for Win9x and NT. The Windows9x release is about 7MB, and the NT version is 2.2MB. Snag the files from The Diamond Multimedia Viper V770 page.

Brian Hook Interview [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:41 CET - cosmo]
The guys over at Billy's have interviewed the pre - Grandmaster B guy, Brian Hook, which just told us the shocking news that he leaves id Software. Here's a little part of it:

id was a great experience for me, and I cannot emphasize that enough. But at id I had a specific role to play, and that was as a supporting programmer to John Carmack. There is nothing wrong with this, since that is what I was hired to do, but at some point a programmer really lusts to be in a position where they can exert more influence on the technical direction of a company. In effect, I wanted more responsibility, and at id asking for that kind of responsibility would have been like playing for the Chicago Bulls and bitching at Michael Jordan to pass the ball more. John Carmack is, quite simply, the most complete and competent game programmer of our generation. End of story. There wasn't much room for me to grow comfortably in that environment. At Verant I will be able to contribute immediately, and with a bigger impact than I ever had at id.

And here's yesterdays announcement at the Stratics EverQuest News page, confirming that he will be joining Verant Interactive (seen on Blue's):

San Diego, June 3rd, 1999 - Hook, formerly of Id Software and programmer on both Quake 2 and Quake 3, is a veteran of the games industry. His credits also include being one of the chief architects of the Glide API during his tenure at 3DFX; development work on the OpenGL code base at Silicon Graphics; and he has written numerous articles for magazines such as Dr. Dobb's Journals and Game Developer. He brings with him seasoned talent and an immense knowledge base.

"Verant is committed to both massively multiplayer gaming as well as cutting-edge 3D technology," said President and CEO of Verant Interactive, John Smedley. "Insuring that we have the talent and expertise to lead the way in both of these fields is critical to our company's goals, and adding someone of Brian's caliber to our already strong programming team is going to help us make the best games out there."

"I'm very excited to have Brian on board," said Brad McQuaid, Verant Vice President . "I believe successful games are made from both great technology and great design, and Brian brings us a lot of talent in both of those areas."

"Verant is the perfect place for me. I'm a huge fan of their games, and the opportunity to work on Verant's future titles is just too good to pass up," said Brian Hook. "I strongly believe in Verant's commitment to making the best Massively Multiplayer games out there, and I'm excited to be able to contribute to a product line that will be the benchmark against which all other Massive Multiplayer games are judged. People are going to be blown away when they see what Verant is working on."

Hook will be involved with programming and technology in both current and future Verant projects.

Tim Sweeney Interview [Friday 4 June 1999 - 19:29 CET - cosmo]
Thanks to Morn for letting me know that he has upped an interview with Epic Megagames' cool programmer-dude, Tim Sweeney. The interview is foucused on his upcoming title Unreal Tournament, and his wiew on the gaming industry. The interview is available in German, plus an English translation.

Carmack Worklog [Thursday 3 June 1999 - 16:00 CET - cosmo]
Carmack did a .plan update with the latest list of things he just added to Quake3Arena.

New Demoplay [Thursday 3 June 1999 - 16:00 CET - cosmo]
A new version 2.4 of Demoplay is released. The new version includes support for the Quake3Arena Test.

UT Movie [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:57 CET - cosmo]
Thanks to Arcane over at UnrealUniverse for letting me know that CliffyB mentioned this in his .plan:

Unfortunately, no one can be told what Unreal Tournament is. You have to see it for yourself.

ftp://download2.gamespy.com/demos/action/ut1.zip

Took Mark and I a while to put this movie together, and we're rather proud of it.

This is what the guys over at Next-Gen had to say about the bad boy:

Unreal Tournament is gorgeous. Don't believe us? Download this movie. Weighing in at 30MB, this Quicktime flick shows gameplay aplenty, including the excellent character animations, physics, and the huge environments Unreal made famous.

Here's what Mark Rein from Epic has to tell us about the movie:

"This is Unreal Tournament footage shot on video a few weeks before E3. Cliff Bleszinski is manning the camera and in a tribute to the movie The Matrix, Cliff has a little fun with the slowmo key while playing.

"We're getting pretty close to completing Unreal Tournament. Right now I'd say we're about 2-3 weeks away from a release candidate which probably means 4-6 weeks from retail release. We plan to release a few more movies in the next month or so to illustrate some of the cool new features in this game."

Feast your eyes: File Download - 30.8MB.

DoomCE Source Code Released [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:37 CET - cosmo]
Saw on Blue's that Bruce Lewis has released the source code to his WindowsCE port of Doom. Grab the uncompiled stuff from here and read the ReadMe file.

New Scandinavian Q3A Master Server [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:37 CET - cosmo]
ThereJust added the new master.quake3.tpo.fi (212.63.23.171) port 27950 to my master server optiuon in GameSpy. If you are living in scandinavia too, be sure to set up your server-browser.

TNT2 Drivers [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:37 CET - cosmo]
There's new drivers for Guillemot's TNT2-based accelerators on this site.

New Reqiem Patch [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:37 CET - cosmo]
Saw on Blue's that there's a new version 1.2 Patch for Requim: Avenging Angel over at 3DO's Patches page. Here's the new stuff:

Enabled dithering in the Direct3D® version of Requiem: Avenging Angel for greatly improved visual quality.
Additionally, this update disables auto-mipmapping; all textures in Requiem: Avenging Angel were designed to look best without the use of mipmaps.
Enables support for joysticks and gamepads using Microsoft® Direct Input. The joystick or gamepad must be calibrated before entering the game. Configuring the joystick or gamepad is similar to configuring the keyboard and mouse.
Computers with multiple CD-ROM drives can now play the game on any of the CD-ROM drives.
There is now full support for the 3Dfx(TM) Voodoo3 hardware accelerator. PLEASE NOTE: There are known incompatibilities with the recently released Quake 3 beta drivers. Using these drivers with the 1600x1200 resolution could cause unexpected errors. Please use non-beta drivers with Requiem: Avenging Angel.
Enhancements have been made to all of the boss characters. Their AI has been refined and they now flash red when taking damage.
Support for 3D sound has been expanded and enhanced. Sound cards equipped with Aureal™’s A3D technology are now supported (positional only, not reverb). Any sound cards supporting DirectSound 3D are now supported. More accurate 3D sound emulation in software is now possible if you choose to use DirectSound 3D Software from Microsoft or RSX from RAD GameTools.

Brian Hook Leaves id Software [Wednessday 2 June 1999 - 14:37 CET - cosmo]
Just dropped by id Software's Brian Hook's .plan. The cool guy is leaving id and joining another (currently secret) company. This is really shocking news for me, Brian is a great game developer! Here's the full update:

Egads, how rumors fly so quickly and brazenly. And how scary that they are often so close to the truth and yet so far. :-)

To make a long story short, I'm leaving id.

My work at id has been a pivotal and important part of my life. I've learned a lot about programming, team work, and dealing with being in a position of high visibility. Even better, I've made some really good friends. The owners here have given me a great opportunity to advance myself both professionally and personally and they've rewarded me far better than expected in the process. This is a once in a lifetime gig, and will mark one of the most significant periods in my life.

For all these things and more I am hugely appreciative to Kevin, John, and Adrian. I cannot emphasize enough what kind of a privilege and learning experience it has been working here and, specifically, working with John. The type of talent, genius, and hard work he has demonstrated is the kind of thing you see once in a generation, and I feel privileged to have been able to work with someone of his caliber.

The team here consists of some of the most talented people I have ever worked with, and it was one hell of a ride working with so many people that simply will not accept anything but the best from you or them. These guys have done a stellar job with Quake2 and Quake3 -- which will OWN the first person deathmatch market -- and going forward, I expect even bigger and better things from this crew.

And of course -- the fans. You guys and gals rock. I may have had my disagreements with some of you in the past, but most of all, if you're flaming at me, it's because you care, and I'd much rather have you folks argue with me than not give a damn. Crap, I'm getting all teary eyed and shit, so instead of turning this into some James Cameron acceptance speech, let me wrap up.

I will probably remain here another week or two cleaning up loose odds and ends, getting things transfered over cleanly, and saying my goodbyes. For business stuff, if you are an IHV your interim point of contact will be Graeme (zaphod@idsoftware.com). I expect that I will continue to receive e-mail here for a bit, so I will start forwarding relevant e-mails to the appropriate parties.

There is no sinister reason for my departure, it's actually an age old story: I got an offer from another company that, quite simply, I could not refuse. Later this week a press release will be issued announcing my new position, and I'm sure some of you will not be surprised when you see where I've ended up. :-)

Signing off,
Brian Hook

Words from Tim [Tuesday 1 June 1999 - 15:25 CET - cosmo]
Tim Sweeney of Epic Megagames has made some updates to the Unreal Technology Page the last days (I've been unable to update because of the server trouble):

First off, there's released two new Unreal Patchs while I had my break. The last one is called 225f, and here's a direct link (suggest you are getting over there and read about it first). Note that this patch is for server admins only (no need for normal Unreal players to download), and that it's backwards compatible with the 224 version.
There's also some words about a little holiday over at Epic's HQ (?), a new version of the little UnrealED experimental fix for those who gets a nasy runtime 20005 error when running the editor and even more about UnrealED (and sound problems).
Also, they have a Standalone UnrealED installer for 3dfx Voodoo3 owners that didn't get UnrealED together with the Unreal bundle.
Tim Sweeney offers a signed copy of Unreal Tournament to the first person that reveals the exact method behind the new "SLOMO" cheat.

This was just a small round-up, head over there and read the rest!

Should be back now... [Tuesday 1 June 1999 - 14:33 CET - cosmo]
Some of mailed in and told me that there was an "403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected" error when trying to access www.cosmo3d.com. Thank you guys (Insomnis, chiller and NoName).

Zaphod took a closer look, and he sure fixed it! Thank you, Zap.

New Winamp [Monday 30 May 1999 - 15:40 CET - cosmo]
Thanks chiller for telling me that I forgot to mention the Winamp 2.22 release the 26th of May. If you haven't got it yet, head over to Winamp.Com. Some of the new features/improvements/bug fixes since 2.20 are:

Version 2.22

SHOUTcast 1.1 support
Improved WMA Support
Audiosoft secure ASFS support
Lots of bug fixes and stability improvements

Version 2.21

Windows Media Technology 4.0 (WMT4) input/output support
All new better sounding, industry standard Fraunhoffer MP3 decoder
Generic PCM EQ that works on most formats (WAV/XM/MOD/IT/VQF/AAC/etc)
Recursion in open directory dialog is now optional
Windowshade mode for Equalizer
Improved CDDA support
Minibrowser improvements (new start page, etc)
New version checking
Bug fixes as usual

New Week [Monday 30 May 1999 - 15:40 CET - cosmo]
I had this summer's examination in English today - and it went pretty well ;) No updates yesterday, but I think the excuse is good enogh... Simple: It was my birthday, and now I'm 14! Happy, happy, joy, joy - let's celebrate with tons of news updates today ;) You can (as usual access last weeks news from the News Archive.

- Axel (cosmo)